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| Bellow wrote about tough, existential
heroes |
American novelist Saul Bellow, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature
in 1976, has died, aged 89.
He was brought up in Chicago, and much of his work deals with that
city, and the experience of Jews and immigrants in 20th Century America.
His novels included Seize The Day, Henderson The Rain King, Herzog, Mr
Sammler's Planet and Humboldt's Gift.
His friend Walter Pozen said the writer had been in declining health,
but was "wonderfully sharp to the end".
Bellow's wife and daughter were at his side when he died at his home in
Brookline, Massachusetts, Mr Pozen told the Associated Press news agency.
In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech , Bellow described the modern novel
as a "latter-day lean-to, a hovel in which the spirit takes shelter".
He added: "It is the best we can do just now."
He was born Solomon Bellows near Montreal in 1915, the son of Russian
immigrants, who moved to Chicago when he was nine.
He grew up in the Depression of the 1930s, but
said that he found something energising
in the determination shown by people around him.
"There were people going to libraries and reading books," he said in a
1997 AP interview.
"They were going to libraries because they were trying to keep warm;
they had no heat in their houses.
"There was a great deal of mental energy in those days, of very
appealing sorts. Working stiffs were having ideas."
Fellow novelist Philip Roth paid tribute to Bellow, saying he was one
of two giants of the modern American fiction.
"The backbone of 20th Century American literature has been provided by
two novelists - William Faulkner and Saul Bellow," Mr Roth said.
"Together they are the Melville, Hawthorne, and Twain of the 20th
Century."
Bellow was married five times, and fathered a daughter at the age of
84.
(BBC) | 
Updated: 2005-04-06 09:05
